1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical fiber clamp for holding a batch of coated optical fiber tape and, in particular, to an optical fiber clamp for adjusting axis of optical fibers with high accuracy, to fuse the optical fibers and connect all of the optical fibers to each other at once.
2. Background Information
Conventional methods of fusing and connecting respective optical fibers of a coated optical fiber tape include first removing the coatings from the optical fiber. Thereafter, an optical fiber clamp 10 such as that shown in FIGS. 5(A) and 5(B) is used.
The optical fibers 13 are arranged one by one into a plurality of V-shaped grooves 11 formed in the body 12. Thereafter, a clamp 14 is used to give a pressing force to the optical fibers 13 to hold them in place.
To fuse and connect multicore optical fibers all at once, it is necessary to perform a push/pull operation upon each optical fiber by use of the above-mentioned optical fiber clamp.
A surface of the optical fiber clamp coming in contact with the respective optical fibers 13 is made smooth so that the respective centers of the optical fibers 13 will not shift with respect to each other even when this push/pull operation is performed.
The optical fiber clamp 14 is made of heat-proof material which is durable against a discharge arc at the time of fusing. At the same time, the optical fiber clamp 14 is made of a hard material to maintain the position relationship between itself and the V-shaped grooves.
In the conventional methods discussed above, a problem arises that large displacement differences are often produced both between the axial alignment of optical fibers with respect to optical fibers opposite thereto and between the axial displacement of optical fibers with respect to optical fibers adjacent thereto. The large displacement differences occur because the outer diameters of the optical fibers themselves vary because of the dimensional irregularities in the optical fibers, and because the clamp itself is a rigid body.
When, for example, a plurality of optical fibers are to be connected at once, it is impossible to press all of the optical fibers into the V-shaped grooves uniformly under the same condition. In some cases, the maximum allowable axial displacements of the optical fibers may only be 6 .mu.m. As a result, the problem arises that the loss of connection is not less than 0.2 dB.